1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image forming apparatus capable of indicating orientations for setting original documents.
2. Description of Related Arms
Conventional copiers are provided with a means for indicating the direction (length or width directional orientations) in which an original document is set on a document platen. These copiers display the directional orientation of a fed copy sheet to be the same direction as the direction in which the original document is set.
In the present invention, the directions in which the original document may be set are the length and width directions and are defined below.
WIDTHWISE ORIENTATION: The direction wherein the short (width) side of the original document is oriented in the copy sheet transport direction Y as said original document is placed on the glass document platen 8, as shown in FIG. 4a.
LENGTHWISE ORIENTATION: The direction wherein the long (length) side of the original document is oriented in the copy sheet transport direction Y as said original document is placed on the glass document platen 8, as shown in FIG. 4b.
Conventional copiers capable of being set in special copy modes such as book copy mode (also called divisional copy mode), 2-in-1 copy mode and the like, are disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,017,173 and 4,771,319 and others.
In the book copy mode a single sheet original document "a" having two image regions A and B is reproduced so that the image regions A and B are copied onto separate copy sheets c and b respectively, as shown in FIGS. 5a and 5b.
In the 2-in-1 copy mode two original documents are continuously transported by means of an automatic document feeding means (ADF) or the like so as to be placed adjacently one to the other as if forming a single sheet document, and the two original document images are copied onto a single copy sheet, as shown in FIGS. 5c and 5d.
In copiers having the book copy mode and 2-in-1 copy mode, confusion occurs when indicating (displaying) the orientation in which the original document is set as previously described. That is, in the book copy mode the original document "a" is oriented in the lengthwise direction, while the orientation of both the fed copy sheets b and c is in the widthwise direction, as can be readily understood from the drawing. Thus, if the display indicates the same direction as the fed copy sheet direction, the display will contradict the actual orientation in which the original document is set.
Therefore, when the operator refers to the display that indicates the orientation of the original document as s/he sets the placement of the document, confusion will result because the operator will not know if the display indicates a set direction for a single page of the document (either image region A or B) or that for the document in its entirety (both image regions A and B).
As is clearly shown in the drawings, the aforesaid problems are also common to the 2-in-1 copy mode described in FIGS. 5c and 5d.
In the 2-in-1 copy mode the direction in which copy sheet f is set is in a lengthwise orientation, while the original documents d and e are set in a widthwise orientation.
Further, because the copy sheet feed direction is optionally selectable when the operator manually feeds the copy sheet and performs a copy operation with the copier in the manual mode, the preset displayed original document set direction is erroneous and can only result in operator confusion.
The present invention is designed to eliminate the aforesaid problems.